Quote:
Last week Labour's shadow culture minister Dan Jarvis called for "an effective and credible taskforce" to be created to explore e-book lending in libraries, to "consist of librarians, authors and publishers and be chaired by an independent expert". His calls followed a meeting on library e-lending which took place on 3rd July between Little, Brown c.e.o. Ursula Mackenzie, Penguin c.e.o. Tom Weldon, Random House UK's deputy chairman Ian Hudson and Publishers Association c.e.o. Richard Mollet, along with culture minister Ed Vaizey, Justin Tomlinson, the chairman of the All-party Parliamentary Committee on Libraries, and Jarvis himself.
This week a DCMS spokesman said Vaizey expected to make "a detailed announcement shortly" on the question of an independent review. The Bookseller understands Vaizey will announce such a review, to commence shortly.
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Tomlinson has already outlined his own ideas for how a library e-model would take shape, suggesting in principle that e-books should be borrowed through a physical visit to a library, "thus protecting footfall" and that "a small charge" should be levied "with the money shared between the publishers and the physical community library".
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Doesn't sound promising if the library dude is in favor of charging a fee and physical visits to a library in order to check out ebooks.